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| This week in general |
- Luke Harper and Emma are supposed to be back to full health, so hopefully we'll be getting them back on our screens shortly.
- There are rumblings that SmackDown! might see a 'shooters' stable of Ziggler, Swagger and Shelton Benjamin. Now that'd be pretty cool, especially having the short-lived team of Zig-Swag back.
- Cody Rhodes has now signed with TNA! What this means for those dates he has for ROH and that lot, I dunno, we'll see, but it's always nice to see people finding work. Go get 'em Cody!
Monday Night RAW
Best Match on RAW (19/9/16): Rich Swann vs Gran Metalik vs Cedric Alexander vs Brian Kendrick - No.1 Contender's Match for the WWE Cruiserweight Championship
They have arrived! The Cruiserweight division is now officially apart of Monday Night RAW and they certainly made their presence felt. Although the introduction's could've been better, with it literally being a man reading names off of pieces of paper, as a whole, it was fucking awesome. I'm beginning to think that these guys may well be on here quite a bit from here on out. Plus, they started putting their themes on their YouTube;
Now I think this match had a lovely formula of keeping people entertained. A mix of quick successions of all four with some one-on-one encounters and fairly regular swaps made for a lot of fun to be had. Plus, with the pace these guys wrestle at, everything seemed so much more fluid and quick.
I thought it was pretty noticeable than not a whole lot of people at the arena had watched the Classic on the Network, so it was really cool to hear all the 'WOOOOAAAH's from the audience, most noticeably at Metalik doing his rope work and all the sick strikes these guys were connecting with, Jesus did they get some amazing hits in. I thought Cedric might not have left enough room for his handstand rebound, but he clattered Swann with a kick with some piss and vinegar behind it.
Kendrick looks to be solidified as the main heel of this group, avoiding confrontation for the most part, but he did land a sick tornado DDT on Metalik. To me, it looked like they put some effort into showing off Cedric the most, with him having a lot of cool moments and was probably the one with the most time in the ring. Not only that, he got to hit his beast of a finisher, The Lumbar Check;
However, this would be hit in vain as Kendrick would manage to apply the Bully Choke, they've changed the name to The Captain's Hook which is still kinda cool I suppose, to pick up a submission victory.
Kendrick vs Perkins at Clash of Champions - Fucking kill it, lads.
It's also worth mentioning that the Cruiserweights were featured on Main Event this week in the shape of Rich Swann versus Lince Dorado which was pretty damn sweet, worth a watch too.
SmackDown! LIVE
Best Match on SD! (20/9/16): The Miz vs Dolph Ziggler - WWE Intercontinental Championship Match
In a rematch from Backlash, we have The Miz taking on Dolph Ziggler with his title once again.
This was pretty similar to their previous encounter, but there was more of a focus on psychology and story-telling here. Miz, somehow, has gotten even better at being a right dick as of late, with the imitating of Daniel Bryan and with the Maryse shenanigans. I'm starting to like Ziggler more with him now using a lot more of his amateur wrestling and all this fancy grappling.
The ending was really well done, with Maryse trying to once again spray Ziggler in the face with whatever is in that can, getting caught and then having Ziggler hitting the Zig-Zag, then dragging out to having Miz turning out to use the spray and get the roll-up. Some really smart psychology here.
I can't remember much else about this match, apologies for that. But I do know that this was the best match we had on SmackDown! this week.
NXT
Best Match on NXT (21/9/16): Cedric Alexander vs Andrade 'Cien' Almas
Cedric's back again, and this time he's headed down to Full Sail to face off against Andrade 'Cien' Almas.
Sweet Barry Wine this was great, continuing the trend of NXT putting on some great matches on their weekly show.
These guys were going hard in this one. Once we got this going, the pace, on average was somewhere between 'Woah' to 'Jesus' for the majority of the contest, with the two of them doing all these cool moves, manoeuvres and some other thing beginning with 'm'. Here is a good depiction of the type of thing I'm talking about.
Almas has been using the ropes more since his debut and I think it's making him a lot more entertaining, with both springboards in and out of the ring making his matches that much more exciting. Akin to what I said on his match on RAW, Cedric's handspring kick was magnificent in this match too, with this one looking to be in an even tighter space. He also landed a picture-perfect tope con hilo which may, thinking about it, be the prettiest on the roster (though Sami's spread limbed, star-like one is special).
The ending saw Cedric landing a ferocious Lumbar Check, which had an element of 'outta nowhere' to it, making even more thrilling to see. Overall, this match was pretty damn awesome, lots of great stuff throughout and you'd have to really try to be bored.
I'm loving this wave of Alexander WWE is riding right now, and I look forward where they go with him, especially with it sounding like he may be fairly regular on NXT as well as being on RAW. I've started to warm up to Almas lately, though he's been facing off against people I like much more, he's certainly rising in my ranks.
This show also had Austin Aries vs Oney Lorcan which was really cool as well, and was a very close second. I'd give that a look too if I were you.
Ring of Honour
Best Match on ROH TV (Episode 262): The Addiction (Christopher Daniels & Frankie Kazarian) & Kamaitachi vs CHAOS (Rocky Romero, Trent Baretta & Kazuchika Okada)
We're getting closer to All-Star Extravaganza 8 (September 30th), and, I think, we're finishing up the last of the Sam's Town tapings following Death Before Dishonour. On this week's show, we've got tag team action in the form of The Addiction and Kamaitachi versus the New Japan stable of CHAOS, featuring Roppongi Vice and the IWGP Heavyweight Champion, Kazuchika Okada. Also, we've got Steve Corino back on commentary, which I didn't realise how much I missed.
The challenging of Okada from Kamaitachi was a great touch, I thought, with Kamai' being on excursion and is seen as ranked much lower than Okada in terms of Japanese wrestling hierarchy. Kamaitachi is ridiculously quick, and his running of the ropes 3 times before hitting a dropkick put some devastating momentum behind those feet, making it infinitely cooler.
Had some great tag team work from The Addiction and RPG, which took up most of the match, with both performing some of their usual tandem offence. Daniels, at one point, did a moonsault that ended up catching Trent in the head with his knees which was a tad scary, but everything went fine otherwise.
The finish saw a Best Meltzer Ever (Moonsault Assisted Tombstone Piledriver - a dig at The Young Bucks' Meltzer Driver). Some great stuff in this match, I probably haven't done it justice in this write up.
As always, you can watch ROH TV for
Lucha Underground
Best Match on LU (S3E3): Aero Star, Drago & Fenix vs Worldwide Underground (Jack Evans, PJ Black & Taya) - Lucha Underground Trios Championship Match
Main event-ing this episode of Lucha Underground, we've got this great 6-man tag team match in the form of Aero Star, Drago and Fenix defending their titles against Worldwide Underground.
Now, this is one of the few instances so far in my LU experience that I've seen everyone in this match at least once before, so I had some idea what to expect. However, the dissension in the ranks of Worldwide Underground was news to me. I thought they did that really well, with Jack Evans's childish refusal to co-operate with Black and their one-upmanship in the ring. It's been a long while since I've seen PJ Black (FKA Justin Gabriel - had to Google that), and I guess he wasn't this flippy in WWE because Jesus he did some cool flips.
Now, the champions here were awesome, I remember seeing these guys at BOLA along with Pentagon Jr. last year and being blown away from the stuff they did. Everything's so slick and agile that it all blends perfectly from one thing to the next, and when they combined their efforts it was even sweeter.
After this Aero Star countered a PJ Black springboard with his own, giving him a Frankensteiner in mid-air which was fucking amazing which then led to the finish. Aero Star's use of the middle rope still baffles me, not so much why he does it, but how. I can't figure out how he musters the ability to get over the ropes the way he does. This was an awesome match, and I really want to see more trios matches in LU soon.
PWG: THIRTEEN
Best Match on THIRTEEN: The Young Bucks (Matt & Nick Jackson) vs Death by Elbow (Chris Hero & JT Dunn) - PWG Tag Team Championship Match
Get in the fucking van right now because we're taking this blog back to Reseda, CA!
The best match here was the tag team contest between Hero and JT Dunn, Death by Elbow, and The Young Bucks.
Before we start, I wanted to pick out perhaps the best heckle I've ever heard directed at The Young Bucks. Amidst the shouts of 'FUCK-THE-YOUNG-BUCKS (clap-clap-clapclapclap)', there was just this one dude you yelled 'Boooo, you have a bad attitude, boooo!'. That certainly tickled me in a good place.
So, we start things off with Dunn getting pretty heavily worked on by both the Bucks. Hero would occasionally saunter in and fuck 'em up with a couple straight jabs. Hero would predominantly have this role, with Dunn taking the brunt of the Bucks' offence which would then be neutralised by Hero's entrance into the ring, for a period at least.
Now these lads went all out on their strikes, landing some proper hard ones on each other and with such a frequency that it became near non-stop, depicted pretty perfectly by this clip;
Perhaps one of the biggest spots I've seen in a while occurred in this match-up here; The Young Bucks, on the outside, hit an Electric Chair/Superkick combo on Dunn which rocked both him and everyone in attendance, even making Chuck Taylor on commentary yelp 'He's dead now!'.
Overall, this match was pretty fucking awesome, lots of cool action with a good blend of quick, boom-boom-boom moments with the more relaxed, slower (but not too slow) paced wrestling. Great stuff from all here, Death by Elbow is quickly becoming one of my favourite tag teams.
SUPERKICK COUNT: 21 (Fuck, that's quite a bit)
The Verdict
Best Match of the Week: The Young Bucks (Matt & Nick Jackson) vs Death by Elbow (Chris Hero & JT Dunn) - PWG Tag Team Championship Match - PWG: THIRTEEN
Once again, PWG's DVD releases offer the best match of the week. It was a thrill ride from start to finish, featuring amazing spots and shots.
Though they didn't win, a lot of the matches this week could've won any other time around, and are better than ones that have previously won this award. The Cruiserweights made a huge impact, Cedric's becoming a star and Lucha Underground continues to put on some really cool television.
With another week in the books, here's what the leaderboard looks like now with the above results.
That's all from me this week guys, and I just thought I'd mention that sometime soon, I will be throwing my hat into the /r/WredditCountryClub GOAT Royal Rumble competition, and my pick is AJ 'The Motherfucking Phenomenal One' Styles. That'll be out sometime for your reading pleasure, and I'll probably put it on this here blog too.
Have a good week, and enjoy your wrestling.
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